Introduction

Insurance Australia Group (IAG) recognises a clear link between its business and the broad social, environmental and economic well-being of the communities in which it operates. One of the principles of IAG’s core purpose is to reduce risk in the community, with a specific focus on risk reduction in the following 4 areas:

• Reducing the effects of global climate change.
• Reducing crime.
• Improving road safety.
• Improving workplace safety.

To help farmers manage their workplace health and safety obligations, CGU Insurance (an IAG company) has developed the Farm Risk Radar™, an innovative online risk management package available to CGU Farm Pack customers. Farm Risk Radar™ enables farm businesses to self-assess a range of risks to their business, the environment and health and safety by grading their performance as non conformance, partial conformance or conformance. An action plan is generated to address areas for improvement with a selection of resources to assist.

Award Winning

The Risk Radar™ concept has been adopted by IAG internally (winning the NSW WorkCover Best Implementation of an OHS System award for IAG in November 2005), as well as by the IAG preferred smash repairer network (as launched by The Hon. Mr Bob Debus in November 2004). Risk Radar™ for Smash Repairers was recognised with the United Nations Australia triple-bottom line award in July 2005. Risk Radar for Farms was awarded the Farm Safety: Best Rural Impact in the 2006 NSCA/Telstra National Safety Awards of Excellence.

CGU Insurance is now developing an environmental module for Farm Risk Radar ™in partnership with the NSW Department of Environment & Climate Change and with support of the NSW Department of Primary Industries.

Sustainability Benefits

The Farm Risk Radar ™ provides a number of benefits;

Environmental

• Helps Australian farmers and agri-business owners understand and, where possible, self-manage their environmental risk and improve the sustainability of their businesses
• Enables the collection of information regarding current levels of environmental performance amongst farmers

Social

• The online platform (user-able via dial-up internet) enables farmers to access information, tools and resources that currently are available only through safety and environmental consultants in larger centres, but which are unavailable in remote areas.
• Use Risk Radar™ as a unique delivery platform for the myriad of useful resources and tools which already exist.

Economic

• Helps Australian farmers maximise the environmental sustainability of their businesses.
• Helps farmers avoid fines, penalties and claims related to poor environmental performance and compliance

The new module will be launched in July 2007 and will cover areas such as: Farm Planning, Soils, Pest Management, Water Use Quality and Management, Energy and waste.

The Farm Risk Radar ™:

• Links to the relevant State and Federal Government resources and other valuable tools for managing environmental and sustainability issues on Australian farms
• Allows customisation by State/Jurisdiction and by commodity (e.g. the farmer selects ‘cane-grower’, ‘viticulture’ etc).

The environment component will be available via the online Farm Risk Radar™ platform.

Conclusion

IAG continues to demonstrate their support for risk reduction in ways that are practical and useful for our customers. The Farm Risk Radar™ is available through our Brokers or Advisors. We encourage all our Country Pack Policy holders to use the tool in turn gaining some real benefit through managing their risks.